Glass Tiger, one of Canada’s most iconic bands, is headed for Victoria on Dec. 4.
The group has had an amazing journey from the rough-and-tumble days of the ’80s when they played whatever shows came their way in their hometown of Newmarket.
“We gave it everything we had and, sure enough, we started packing the bars and the record companies came sniffing around and before you know it, we landed an international record deal,” said frontman Alan Frew in a recent interview.
Glass Tiger has come a long way since those days in the bars. They’ve played for a crowd of 100,000 people on Parliament Hill and shared the stage with Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart, Julian Lennon, Tina Turner, Journey, the Chieftains, and a whole load of others.
Since their debut album The Thin Red Line catapulted their career in 1986, the music has just kept coming with their latest album Songs for a Winter’s Night being released to critical acclaim in 2020. All that music has earned them multiple Juno and Grammy nominations and three Juno awards, including Canadian Entertainer of the Year.
But Frew maintains that, For Glass Tiger, it was never about awards or record sales. The band, he said, “was bound together by their love of the music”.
That love was reborn in 2003 when, after a ten-year hiatus to pursue other projects, they reformed with a new drummer (Christopher McNeill). The original band members (Alan Frew, vocals, Sam Reid, keyboard, Al Connelly, guitar, Wayne Parker, bass), are still in place and still rocking the house in every venue in which they appear.
And despite Frew’s contention that the awards never really mattered, the band found themselves playing Massey Hall this past September where they were one of 13 music icons inducted into the Canadian Walk of Fame.
Glass Tiger will appear at the McPherson Playhouse on Dec. 4. Tickets are available at glasstiger.ca/pages/shows.